Mark Divver: Championship experience should help P-Bruins in post-season

Mark Divver Assistant Sports Editor markdivver

Thursday

Apr 25, 2013 at 7:22 PM

The P-Bruins, who finished first overall in the AHL with 105 points, open what they hope will be a lengthy postseason run on Friday night at 7:05 against the Hershey Bears at The Dunk.

The Providence Bruins won 50 of 76 regular-season games and took home a truckload of individual and team trophies, which made for a lot of very entertaining Friday nights and Sunday afternoons at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center over the past seven months.

Now the real fun starts.

The P-Bruins, who finished first overall in the AHL with 105 points, open what they hope will be a lengthy postseason run on Friday night at 7:05 against the Hershey Bears at The Dunk. It will be their first playoff game since dropping Game Five of the Calder Cup semifinals to the Bears on Memorial Day 2009 — a stretch of 1,430 days.

As great as the regular season was, Garnet Exelby put it in proper perspective after practice the other day:

“What it all means on Friday is nothing. It’s over now. Our record is zeroes all the way across the board,” said Exelby, a veteran of 11 NHL and AHL seasons who won a Calder Cup with Chicago in 2002.

The P-Bruins’ focus now is on winning 15 games — starting with the best-of-five against Hershey — and hoisting the Calder Cup for the second time in franchise history.

They have a good chance. There is no overwhelming favorite among the 16 playoff teams. Providence, Springfield, Syracuse, Binghamton and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton look like the top contenders in the East, along with Texas and Toronto in the West.

One intangible that Providence has going for it is the number of winners in its dressing room. When the team runs into adversity in the postseason — as it inevitably will — they will lean on those players.

Chris Bourque has been a Calder Cup champion three times, Graham Mink twice and Exelby once.

Niklas Svedberg backstopped Brynas to the Swedish Elite League championship last spring, just a few weeks after Tommy Cross captained Boston College to the NCAA title.

Colby Cohen scored the winner in overtime as Boston University pulled off a miracle comeback victory over Miami University for the NCAA crown in 2009. Also on that BU team was David Warsofsky, who was an assistant captain on the gold-medal winning U.S. team at the World Junior Championships in 2010.

Assistant coach Kevin Dean is the last man to win both a Stanley Cup and a Calder Cup in the same season. Craig Cunningham and coach Bruce Cassidy won the Memorial Cup, the championship of Canadian junior hockey.

Even the equipment manager has a championship ring. Jason Berger was with the Florida Everblades last spring when they won the East Coast Hockey League championship.

Obviously, past performance is no guarantee of future results, as the saying goes. But having players who have won is important.

“It’s part of the reason we’ve had success this season,” said Dean, who captured twin titles with New Jersey and Albany in 1995.

“At every position we have guys that have won. It matters a lot. I don’t know if it’s the most important thing, but it matters. It’s why we won a lot of those close games,” he said.

And it will be especially important in the postseason.

“There are guys that react well to pressure and it tends to be guys that have won,” said Cassidy.

“That really does go a long way” said Bourque, a winner in 2006, 2009 and 2010 with Hershey. “The guys that have been in those situations, that knowledge does come in handy, when you’ve been in a tight game and you’ve pushed through to win. It’s good to have those kinds of guys in your locker room.”

“It helps, but it’s certainly not a prerequisite,” said Mink, a winner with Hershey in 2006 and 2009.

“It helps me to have been there before. I feel I’ve got a solid understanding of what it takes to win. And I know it helps having Chris Bourque here and Garnet Exelby — even the guys that were around for Boston’s [2011] run [Trent Whitfield, Jordan Caron]. You hope to be able to translate that and help the other guys know what it takes. It definitely helps. I’m glad we have it.”

Learning to cope with the ups and downs of the postseason is critical, said Exelby.

“It’s pretty important, having guys that have been down that road. Emotions get involved. Everybody’s pretty amped up, and sometimes you’re more successful if you can find a way to harness and control that emotion.

“It’s a cliché — you don’t get too high, you don’t get too low. You have to treat it business-like. Some games will go well. Some won’t. With so many guys that have been through it, that culture and attitude will spread through the room and keep things calm in here when it gets a little dicey,” he said.

“I’m asking guys like Exelby for advice on how to approach it,” said Bobby Robins, who has never been through an AHL playoff run.

“Just to have that valuable frame of reference in the room is so important for a team, especially one with a lot of young guys on it.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.